Research with a view to improving explosives use in extraction within coal beds

Abstract

The method of horizontal sub-levels with extraction started being used in the eighties, even if, in some mines, variations of it had been used for more than twenty years. The enforcement of this in thick coal beds (> 2.5 m) and vertical beds (>60 °) has showed huge advantages compared with traditional methods like coal faces, since its enforcement has extended drastically in Spanish underground coal mines.

The present study is in line with various works carried out by AITEMIN, whose objective was to evaluate the risk of fire damp explosion provoked by control explosives inside extraction sites. The main trials were completed in the experimental mine of Barbara in Poland. During these trials, different possible modes of loss of confinement of explosives due to extraction were simulated, which supposes a detonation of the charge partially uncovered and in contact with an explosive concentration of methane. .